For a Reason
by Luminary
Summary: A killer out for revenge against Elliot makes a terrible mistake. Now the SVU team has to stop him before he realizes he’s got the wrong victim.
1. Teaser

I own nothing.

* * *

NOTIFICATION OF RELEASE FROM COMMITMENT

DATE: February 4, 2006

VICTIM/FAMILY MEMBER/OFFICIAL (SPECIFY): Det. Elliot Stabler, NYPD, Precinct 16

RE: Lionel Sachet

Dear Det. Stabler:

The person named above was committed to the Manhattan Department of Corrections for an offense in which you were the arresting officer.

Among the rights the State of New York confers upon victims of crime is the right to be notified when an offender is about to be released from custody. This right also applies to immediate families of offenders and those directly involved in the offenders' arrest/prosecution.

The person named above is scheduled for release from Sing Sing Prison on 10 Feb 2006, 8:00 am.

If you have questions regarding this case please contact the Probation Officer Supervisor at 212-555-2460.

Sincerely,

MDC

* * *

Maureen Stabler lay on top of the blankets, head hanging upside-down off the end of her bed. Her roommate Janey, a morning person, always turned the TV on at low volume around eight am, and today _The Princess Bride_, one of Maureen's favorites, was playing. Her eyes were only half open, but she mouthed along with the Impressive Clergyman while Janey grinned at her across the room.

"Mawage…Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...Wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva..."

"You want breakfast?" Janey asked. "Peanut butter and Pepsi, fresh from the…well, the peanut butter's been lying out all night with the lid off. But the Pepsi can will be freshly opened just for you."

She wasn't kidding; after their first semester at Columbia both the girls had fallen with zeal into the vicious cycle of collegiate sloth-hood. Their diet consisted nearly exclusively of caffeine, sugar, and grease, and their room was a catastrophe. Janey was eating her peanut butter by dipping the back of a pen in the jar, then licking it. Some of the reddish bangs framing her face had little spots of peanut butter in them.

"Muh. Too early for food." Maureen attempted, and failed, to roll over. Eight o' clock was unholy. It ought to be outlawed. "What are you even doing?"

Janey tilted her computer screen slightly to show her. "Essay for my rhetoric of argument class. Eight to ten pages, due Monday."

"Ten pages! It's not even midterms yet!"

"Yeah, our midterm is in three weeks, and it's fifteen pages. Final is twenty." Janey was an English major.

"Screw that. If I saw that syllabus on the first day of class I'd have walked right out and told the teacher to go to hell."

"Shh! Jesus is listening!" When the girls had first moved in together, Janey, who was Presbyterian but much more into her religion than Maureen was into her own Catholicism, had put a picture of Jesus' face over her desk. When the debris in the dorm room got more than a foot deep Maureen had joked that it looked like Jesus, from Janey's desk, had smote the room with a tornado for their sinful ways. So Janey hung Jesus right over the door, and ever since it had been a running joke that Jesus was watching their every move, and if their room was plunged further into filth, it was because they cursed too much or watched too much Southpark and He was displeased.

Inigo Montoya was standing off with Count Rugen when there was a knock at the door.

"Who but me is up on a Saturday?" Janey asked, tipping down her chair.

"If it's for me I'm asleep," Maureen mumbled.

The slog across the room took several seconds, and whoever it was knocked again, loudly. Janey opened the door to reveal a tall delivery man with wide pale eyes and a small box.

"I have a package here for Maureen Stabler," he said in an oddly clipped voice, while peering into the room. "I need a signature." Maureen lifted her head a little bit, but didn't rise.

"I thought we weren't supposed to get packages in the dorms," said Janey.

"This is urgent delivery. We go to the residence halls if the package has to be received in under twenty-four hours." He indicated the large orange label. "The sender is Elliot Stabler."

"I'll sign," said Janey.

"The signature has to be the name on the label. Are you Maureen?"

Maureen groaned inwardly and prepared to rise, but Janey quickly answered, "Yes, I am. Elliot Stabler's my dad."

Delivery guy handed Janey a pen and a clipboard. Relieved, Maureen dropped her head back down.

Two seconds later, the bullet entered under her ribcage. It went through her in a straight line, tearing a hole in her diaphragm and disintegrating the bottom of her right lung before blowing a chunk of the mattress into the floor.

Long before she was able to crawl to her phone and call 911, trying to speak to the operator while sobbing and vomiting up blood, Janey and the delivery man were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

I own nothing.

* * *

Olivia sat outside Maureen's hospital room, phone plastered to her ear, talking with Fin on one line and the crime lab on the other. Every few minutes she glanced discreetly in, checking on Elliot more than Maureen.

Maureen would be fine. At least, she would live. She'd just come out of surgery; there would be a small mark under her ribs and a fist-sized patch of scar tissue on her back for the rest of her life. The doctors had also had to remove the bottom half of a lung. She probably wouldn't be able to run for several years, if ever.

While she slept, Elliot gripped her hand, staring straight ahead. Olivia was pained every time they made eye contact; his face had the same expression it had since nine that morning, after Cragen had called him into his office. He had come out white and thin-lipped, jaw cranked shut so hard Olivia thought he would break his teeth. His crystal blue eyes were wide, unblinking, filled with some unnameable emotion – or a thousand. As he grabbed his jacket and rushed past her, she had called out, "What's up, Elliot?"

"Maureen was attacked," he said tightly, and was out the door.

Olivia had rushed into Cragen's office; he held up his hand before she could ask. Pain was written all over his kind face. "At 8:30 this morning NYPD received a call from Columbia University. It was Elliot's daughter. Apparently a man pretending to be delivering a package entered her dorm room this morning and…just shot her. The roommate is missing."

"My God! Shot her where? Is she…all right?"

"In the chest, and we don't know. She is alive, they're taking her to the hospital now.

"Did he…was there any evidence he-"

Cragen knew what she was asking; it had to have been the first place his mind went, too. "We don't know anything yet. Because she's Stabler's daughter, which could mean there's a connection to a sex offender, I've requested permission that you be the lead investigator on this one. Get up there. They've already secured the scene."

"Did you request a rape kit on Maureen?"

"My next call. You're heading to Carman Hall, room 218. And Liv?"

Olivia paused, already halfway out the door.

"Bring all information to me before giving it to Stabler. You understand why."

Olivia stiffened. "I think you can trust me to tell my partner, and the victim's father, what he needs to know without compromising the case."

There was a second of silent tension between them. Olivia knew Cragen understood that she wouldn't hold back from Elliot, not about this. But he couldn't put up with direct insubordination from anyone, especially not now.

"Just bring it to me first, Liv, and I don't want to have to remind you. Get going."

"When Munch and Fin get back, send them to me. I'll need them going door to door. And I'll need to hear the 911 recording as soon as you can get it," she said over her shoulder as she rushed out of the office.

* * *

Though unfamiliar with the campus, Olivia was able to immediately find Carman Hall by the six police cars camped in front of it. She rushed towards them, badge out, and one of the standing policemen waved her over.

"Detective Benson? We heard you were coming. We haven't let anyone leave."

"Great. You're taking statements?"

"The whole second floor so far. Nobody knows anything. We've talked to the girl at the front desk, and she says she saw an adult male, white, leave with Janey Christopher."

"The roommate."

"Yeah. Said she didn't see any signs of a struggle."

"I wouldn't expect a struggle if he had her at gunpoint. How did he get in? Don't you need a key?"

"An ID card, but any student could have let him in. They're pretty easygoing about it."

Olivia grimaced. "Guess that's about to change."

College students in their pajamas milled curiously around the second floor, hoping to see part of the drama. Room 218 was taped off, and the crime scene examiner, a young man Olivia didn't recognize, was already at work when she arrived. He met her outside the door. There was blood on his gloves, and Olivia suddenly felt short of breath, thinking of Elliot running stone-faced out of the station. "What can you tell me?"

"We can clearly tell where the shooting occurred. We've got the bullet hole and bullet, and powder on the doorframe. Girl was apparently lying on the bed when it happened. There's a trail of blood leading to the phone, where there's a pile of bloody vomit…" Olivia tried not to react. She had seen Maureen just a few weeks ago, on her eighteenth birthday. "…but as for signs of a fight, I don't think we'll ever know."

"Why?"

"Brace yourself." The examiner led her into the room – or, more correctly, to its threshold, since there was no path in through the ocean of crap on the floor. He gave a tired chuckle at her stunned expression. "Yeah. It's going to take my team about a week to dust for fingerprints. That's if we can get a team in here without causing an avalanche."

In the mess, it took a few seconds before Olivia could even make out the blood puddle. She wouldn't have seen the bullet-hole explosion of fluff on Maureen's mattress if it weren't marked with the crime photographer's number tag.

"Here's what's really important. We didn't want to touch it until you got here." The examiner indicated a shoebox-sized cardboard box, also marked with a photographer's tag, on the pile near the door. Carefully easing into the room, trying to squeeze her feet between clothes and food containers without moving them, Olivia squatted by the box and read its label. It looked like standard mail, with the dorm room as the receiving address. It was to Maureen, from Elliot, with a piece of orange tape labeled URGENT across the front.

"I checked with the front desk. No mail comes to the dorms, it all goes to a separate building."

"Send this to the lab right away," Olivia said. "The perp was supposedly dressed as a delivery man. Tell them not to open it till they're sure it doesn't contain anything dangerous. And if you're dusting for prints, start with this."

"Will do. And you should take this." He took a framed picture off one of the desks and handed it to her. It was of a pretty dark-haired girl with a heart-shaped face.

"Our missing person."

After the examiner left with the package, Olivia poked carefully around the room, examining the blood trail, bullet hole, and the trash near the door, hoping to find any kind of evidence, but the examiner had been right: it was impossible to tell lazy-mess from struggle-mess. At one point, while she was leaning in to look at Maureen's bloody handprints on the phone, her head brushed a plastic filing shelf and the tower of soda cans on top of it collapsed on her head. Frustrated, she turned to leave. She was surprised by a large picture of Jesus hanging over the girls' door. He looked stern, and it unsettled her. _Creepy decoration for a dorm room._

Outside the room she yelled at the gathering students to back off so she could call Cragen for an update with some privacy. He sounded understandably stressed, but was, as always, collected. Maureen was in surgery; Munch and Fin were on their way; and the 911 recording was ready. Cragen had the operators feed it to her cell. She listened while her stomach twisted sickeningly.

"_911. Where is your emergency?"_

"_Help please, help me…" crackling, maybe a sob. "I've, I've been shot. This, this guy-"_

"_Honey, where are you?"_

_hard coughing, vomiting, more sobs. "Where are you? Darling, can you tell me where you are?"_

"_At Columbia. University. C-C-Carman Hall…room 218…(sob)…he took Janey and he sh-shot me, but he w-wanted me…"_

"_An ambulance is on its way. Where are you shot?"_

"_In…the stomach, the chest. I don't know, God…" vomiting, "but you've gotta find J-J-Janey, he's got her and it was supposed to be me, she said she was m-me."_

"_I don't…What's your name?" (heavy breathing) "Hello? Honey?"_

"_Maureen Stabler, my dad's a policeman, please send him, please, please, please hurry…"_

"_We're on our way, hon, they'll be there in five minutes. Can you tell me who shot you?"_

"_This guy, he said he was delivering a p-package and it was for me (sob), but my roommate s-said she was m-me, and he took her, her name is Janey Christopher, you've got to find her, it's my fault, please…"_

It went on for ten more minutes. Near the end, it was just Maureen's heavy breathing, with the operator agitatedly trying to keep her talking. When Olivia heard the sounds of the EMTs she hung up her phone with relief. Hopefully Elliot would never have to hear the recording, though he would probably insist.

The worst thing about the call was that it confirmed her fear. _"It was supposed to be me…"_ If the guy was connected to Elliot – a perp with a grudge? – they could be dealing with a kidnapping rapist. Who was after Maureen. Who…thought he had Maureen?

_"She said she was me." _

Why?

Had Janey known this guy was dangerous? Had she lied to protect Maureen? Well, Olivia prayed Janey Christopher knew enough to lead her kidnapper on. If he was out to hurt Elliot and he learned his victim wasn't Elliot's daughter, he would probably kill her.

Olivia examined the picture. Janey actually could be Elliot's daughter; she looked more like him than Maureen. Maureen was blonde and classically beautiful like Kathy. This girl's hair was Elliot's dark reddish-brown, and she had his small mouth and widow's peak. The only real difference was in the eyes; Elliot's were large and ice-blue, while Janey's were brown and slightly slanted. Doe eyes.

"Liv, we got the kid who let him in." Olivia turned to see Fin (who had spoken) and Munch coming down the hall. "Freshman. Looks like the guy just walked in behind him before the door shut, and the kid didn't say anything 'cause that happens all the time."

"We don't think he intentionally aided the guy, but we've got him crying and pissing his pants downstairs if you want some entertainment." Munch: always tactful in serious situations.

The detectives all knew his various inappropriate moods – flippancy, sarcasm, crude humor – were his way of dealing, but this time Fin told him to shut up.

Olivia told them what she knew and suspected. They listened in grim silence.

"We've got guys searching the area, but the perp had a good hour before anybody started looking for him," said Fin.

"Nobody seems to have gotten a good enough look for any description except 'white male in a brown uniform,'" added Munch. "Our guy moves fast. And he's smart - if you're going to attack a dorm, do it Saturday morning when nobody's up. Used a silencer, too. So I'm thinking he also had a getaway plan."

"He's not that smart, if he got the wrong girl," Fin pointed out.

"We need to talk to Maureen. Hopefully she got a good look at him," said Olivia.

"We need to talk to _Elliot_," said Munch. "Find out who's got a grudge against him."

"I'll try to find out if the girls had any boyfriends, enemies, that kinda thing," volunteered Fin.

Munch gave him one of his patented looks of dry contempt. "You do that."

"What the hell is wrong with you? You've been half-assing it ever since we got here!"

"There are no answers here, _Odafin_. We're not looking for a boyfriend. We all know what this is about. Fine bunch of detectives you all are if you worked with Elliot for seven years and didn't see this coming!"

"That's enough outta you!" barked Fin.

Olivia's jaw dropped. "You're blaming _Elliot_?"

Munch hesitated with a sigh, which was quite unconvincing to Olivia. "Not blaming. Deducing," he answered. "And so are you, I'm just the only one saying it. A guy with four kids, when any jerk with the Internet can get on and read all about them, and he's been on SVU for what, ten years? We deal with _rapists_ and he's got a beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter. I can't be the only one who's thought of this."

"Think about shutting your mouth, John!" Olivia snapped.

Her phone rang. Disgusted, she turned from Munch to answer it. Behind her she could hear Fin and Munch arguing harshly in low voices.

She turned back. "Maureen's out of surgery. Let's be there when she wakes up. And Munch, if you say anything about this in front of Elliot, so help me, I'll shoot you."

"Won't have to. He's been saying it to himself all morning." Munch headed for the elevator. Fin put a sympathetic hand on Olivia's shoulder before assuming his normal stoic look and following.


	3. Chapter 3

I own nothing.

* * *

It was the first time in hours the kidnapper had let Janey see his face.

After shooting Maureen he had grabbed her, spun around her so her back was to his chest, slammed his hand over her mouth and put the gun to her head. The box dropped from her frozen fingers. "We are going for a walk, Maureen," he whispered. "You are not going to make a sound. You saw me shoot your friend. I will shoot anyone you speak to. Do you understand me?"

Janey was so shocked fear didn't set in right away. This guy had just shot Maureen, his gun was touching her ear, and in the adrenaline rush burning through her body the only coherent thought that came to her was: _He's not using contractions._

Then he pulled her to his side, pressed the gun into her stomach, and started to move. And she started to feel.

Maureen, he shot Maureen! Just pulled out a gun and fired, out of nowhere…she tried to hear screams or anything coming from their room as they moved down the hall, but the man's shirt was rustling right by her ears and her heartbeat was drowning out all other sounds. Had he killed her? One shot, just like that? She didn't even know where Maureen had been hit; there hadn't been time to turn around before he grabbed her.

_If I hadn't lied about my name, would he have shot me and taken Maureen?_

_This isn't real, this isn't real, it's too fast_. It was inconceivable that a few seconds and a white lie could have put her here.

But his grip on her arm was waking up her stunned senses. His body radiated heat. She was horribly aware of his height and strength; she had never realized before how small she was.

He pulled her down the stairs and out the front door. She was silent as ordered; the front desk girl hardly looked up. When they faced the empty quad a gust of freezing air hit her in the face, and she shrieked and gasped out quietly, without thinking, "God, help me!"

As he dragged her around the back of the dorm her legs suddenly weakened. When she stumbled, he yanked her and she flew forward onto the ground, scraping the side of her head. She was crying now, as silently as she could. She could hear him coming at her from behind, and she crawled forward in a weak attempt to run, forgetting about the gun, but he slammed her shoulders into the ground. A black pillowcase was yanked over her head and pulled into a tight knot at the neck.

The man was on his knees straddling her back, and after tying off the pillowcase he hesitated. They were both gasping for air. She could feel a shaking tension in his thighs. Then, to her horror, he leaned forward slowly, laying his upper body against hers, pressing her into the ground. His face was right by her ear, his hot breath burning through the thin cloth. Her whole body shuddered.

_No…no, not this, not this, please, please, please no._

But he seemed to recover himself; he suddenly stood and jerked her up. A few more steps, and she was rammed into a metal wall – a car?

He let go of her long enough to open the door, and wild terror took her over.

She turned and stumbled blindly, crying "Somebody! Somebody help me!" But her voice came out a reedy whisper, like in nightmares where you need to scream and can't, and he was on her again in a second.

"I told you to be quiet. There is strong incentive for you to obey."

Another odd thought: _Complete sentences_.

He had picked up rope from his car. As she sobbed he tied her hands behind her back, then her feet. Almost effortlessly he picked her up and threw her into the backseat.

Now she was in his home, she guessed. After a long drive during which she exhausted herself crying, he removed her from the car, carried her down two flights of stairs, and set her down against a cold wall. He cut the bindings from her hands, then immediately fastened them to the wall above her head. The clamps he used felt like handcuffs.

"I hope you are comfortable, Miss Stabler."

And he left her. Almost. She heard him move to the far side of the room (basement?), where he breathed loudly and rustled once in a while. The sound seemed about level with her. She developed a horrible mental image of him crouched in the corner, rocking and panting, like a fetal monster. There was a tense wait.

Was it only this morning she had been watching _The Princess Bride_ with Maureen?

Finally, when Janey felt a body-shaking scream of desperation welling up inside her, something happened. She heard him shuffling towards her. She jumped as he touched her shoulders… and untied the pillowcase. When he lifted it off her head, she was met with a set of shockingly luminous green eyes staring unblinking into hers. The man had taken off his uniform jacket and was now in just a white tank top and pants. He was barefoot. His hair was slightly shaggy, brown. The way he was posed on his knees in front of her, she could see every ropy line of muscle in his upper body, and she knew he wanted her to see.

Still, he didn't move. They stared at each other in silence – he with the intense scrutiny of a scientist, she with desperate fear of looking away – for a long time.

* * *

After Maureen woke up from surgery and was able to tell them what actually happened, Elliot, to Olivia's relief, seemed to recover himself. His eyes were focused, he was standing tall, and he was ready to work. After making Maureen repeat her description of the perp several times, he pulled Olivia into the hall.

Kathy watched them through the open door. She had been upstate at a conference, and hadn't been able to arrive until four hours after Maureen's 911 call.

When she first ran up the hall, face tearstained and hair askew, Elliot had caught her up in a hug and rocked her for a while, whispered, "She's gonna make it, Kath," and kissed the top of her head; Olivia, trying to be unobtrusive, had sat silently pretending not to watch. Kathy had absorbed Elliot's comfort for a minute, but then recovered herself and pulled away. She had gone to sit with Maureen and hadn't said a word since, other than to ask about Maureen's condition.

Olivia resented Kathy quite a bit for putting Elliot through the divorce. He was a deeply emotional man; that was what made him so good at his job, the ability to feel the pain of victims without going numb himself. No matter how angry he got, he loved his wife – still loved her. The divorce had hurt him badly. Now, when he needed his wife's support more than ever, she remained cold.

Kathy's gaze had to be eating its way into Elliot's back while he and Olivia whispered, but he didn't mention it.

As usual, when things got too harsh, he was all about the job.

"I know the guy, Liv. His name is Lionel Sachet. He was released from Sing Sing last month," here his jaw tightened with anger, "After eight years. He raped and tortured at least four teenage girls to death, and was working on a fifth when we caught him. But we only got one conviction, on the last girl, and then only on rape. He's out on good behavior."

"You collared him?"

"Caught him in the act. The girl would have been dead in another day, she was...The guy's a monster. He keeps them chained up for days, strips them, cuts their hair, starves them, puts Windex in their water to weaken them...Liv, we've got to find him now. Janey's got maybe a couple days before he does anything permanent."

"How can you be sure it's him?"

"He fitsthe description. Maureen kept saying he had big eyes, it was the first thing she noticed. Sachet's got huge eyes."

Olivia frowned. "You know that's not enough, Elliot."

"Then get Munch and Fin down here with a photo lineup!" he snapped loudly.

He winced, glancing back at Maureen and Kathy, who looked away. He breathed hard for a second while Olivia waited in silence. She knew her partner; this was how he dealt.

"Just call his parole officer, he'll be gone. The timing can't be a coincidence, the M.O. fits…

"He hates me, Liv. I caught him on top of the girl, naked, pulled him off her, kicked him in the balls…and I broke his nose. And drove him to the station that way."

Sounded like Elliot. Olivia remembered what Munch had said about Elliot making enemies, and tried to push it out of her mind. "That would do it."

"He's got a thing about being humiliated. Part of his neurosis, he wants to be seen as perfect. He takes care of himself, works out, goes to salons. And he's trained himself to speak really carefully, perfectly. You'll hear it if you watch interviews with him: No contractions, no cursing, nothing. Probably why he got the good behavior let-up: he doesn't look or sound like a criminal."

"Well, he's all we've got. We'll start with him."

SVU had already put out a missing persons alert on Janey Christopher. They used her picture, but no name. They didn't want to endanger her by cluing the perp in to his mistake. Fin had called Janey's mother in San Diego, but it would be a day or so before she would be able to make it to New York.

Elliot and Olivia didn't tell Kathy that the perp hadn't been after Janey all along. Maureen was safe in the hospital and technically, as a civilian, Kathy wasn't on the short need-to-know list. Olivia had actually asked Maureen not to tell her mother; the fewer people who knew, the better, for now, she said, and Maureen had tearfully nodded.

Before heading to the station, Elliot checked on her. He hugged her lightly, as well as he could without touching her injured chest, and she whispered in his ear, "Daddy, it's my fault if anything happens to Janey. You've got to find her."

His stomach clenched nauseatingly. It wasn't Maureen's fault. Everyone involved knew whose fault it was…except Janey Christopher, who he had never actually met.

"We'll find her, baby, I promise," he said. Because if he didn't…

Lionel Sachet was truly a monster. Elliot hadn't yet told Olivia everything about the collar. The girl Sachet had chained to the wall – a lovely sixteen-year-old honors student named Siabhon – had survived in his basement three weeks, longer than any of the others. When Elliot found her she had been unrecognizeable. Her face was covered in uncleaned razor cuts; her breasts, in human bite marks. Her tongue and lips were so damaged she couldn't speak for days.

She killed herself several weeks before the trial. It was part of the reason they couldn't get the conviction on the other girls; Sachet had told Siabhon all about murdering them, but without her testimony anything the detectives knew was hearsay. Her testimonies were out for the grand jury; death by suicide nullified witness validity under New York law. And they had no proof.

Now it would be a race against the clock to keep Janey Christopher from becoming that proof.

Elliot strode past Olivia in the hallway, leading the way to their squad car.

They began the search for the friendly little redhead chained to a wall in Maureen's place.


	4. Chapter 4

I own nothing.

* * *

Elliot was right about Lionel Sachet.

The probation officer found his apartment deserted. His ankle tracer lay mostly intact on the floor, along with the blowtorch, strips of an insulated heat shield, and homemade battery pack Sachet had used to remove it without disabling the transponder.

Maureen hadn't had to glance twice at the photo lineup before IDing him. The man really was striking looking – handsome, even. Luminous green eyes, a largish nose, well-carved cheekbones, and shaggy brown hair that would actually be stylish if it didn't accentuate his caged-animal expression.

But they couldn't find him.

There was a delay on getting information from the case's most important clue, the package Sachet had left in the girls' dorm room. X-rays revealed several tubes of liquid inside it, and a bomb squad had to be called in. The box was taken to a lab outside the city, where it turned out to contain, carefully foam-wrapped, three small sealed vials:

One of blood.

One of salt water.

And one with a note curled picturesquely into a little scroll: a message in a bottle.

In perfect handwriting, it read,

_Eight years ago you took me apart. Now I need part of you to make myself whole._

_I have decided, however, that eight years in prison is not quite a fair exchange for eighteen years of fatherhood. I give you my blood and tears in payment for the blood and tears of your daughter._

_You will hear from me soon._

It was covered in Sachet's fingerprints; he hadn't made any effort to hide his identity.

Elliot crumpled his faxed copy of the note in disgust. It was ten at night. He and Olivia had made no headway; no one had seen Sachet come or go from the university, and there was no record of him having any residence other than the small apartment he rented upon his release from prison.

They had pulled Elliot's old files on Sachet, and searched the suburban home on the outskirts of Queens where he had first been arrested, but it was now owned by a yuppie couple with a baby. There was no sign that the basement (Sachet's torture chamber) had been used for anything other than storage in years.

Even the package was a dead end. The paper and tubes were purchased near the abandoned apartment.They gave no indication of where Sachet could have gone.

Cragen called in Huang for insight, but his analysis was less than comforting. As he spoke, an enlarged portrait of Janey Christopher's heart-shaped face smiled down on the team from the squad room bulletin board.

"If Sachet couldn't return to his original setting, he'll have tried to recreate it. You're looking for a house with a basement, in the suburbs, just like last time. Look for similar yard decorations, the same colors of paint; he's detail oriented and needs consistency. He works in an unvarying pattern. All the earlier victims were tortured and killed in the same way, on the same timescale. For him to get off on the attacks, the pattern can't change. It's part of his perfection maintenance complex.

"When you interrupted his routine with the last victim," this to Elliot, "he was probably left with an overpowering need to finish what he started. His psychosis is severe enough that a perceived imbalance or disruption in his sexual habits could have caused impotence, or an onset of obsession, or rage. There was no way he could NOT rape again. He's a junkie; it takes sexual violence to make him feel normal. I think he's starting again by completing his last crime. That's what the "you took part of me, I need part of you now" is about. Since he can't use Siabhon Monohan again, he turned to the next obvious choice: the daughter of the man who interrupted him eight years ago."

"What about the 'blood and tears'?" Olivia asked. "That's new. He used to operate entirely in secret. Why lead us on now?"

"My guess: the theatrics are his way of easing his own humiliation. He's an extreme narcissist. He hates public embarrassment more than anything; for eight years he's been stewing over the shame of being caught and hauled in naked, plus whatever indignities he suffered in prison. Now he needs to reassure himself of control by toying with the man who beat him."

Elliot, who had listened with cold concentration, asked, "You think he'll contact me again?"

"Undoubtedly. But you can't wait for it. If he _is _symbolically finishing off the victim that escaped, you're on an accelerated timescale. He could kill her in days, rather than weeks."

Elliot straightened, trying to look more alert. "I'll check on his cellmates at Sing Sing, see if he had any friends who own homes in the suburbs."

Olivia knew he was exhausted. She also knew he wouldn't go home until Lionel Sachet was dead or behind bars.

The most pressing complication in this case was the fact that SVU couldn't drop its other investigations to pursue it. Elliot, though collected and rational, had not turned his brain from Lionel Sachet since this morning, and they all knew that wasn't going to change until the case was closed. Cragen knew better than to order him to ease up, but Munch and Fin would be shouldering a huge caseload until Janey Christopher was rescued. And the team couldn't afford to lose Elliot for long. He was the veteran, their rock, the best of them.

With her partner draining himself and time limits encroaching on two sides, Olivia knew she wouldn't be going home for a while either.

* * *

"You are beautiful," the man said.

His face was inches from Janey's, and in cold, irrational terror, she kept eye contact, thinking it would somehow hold him back. Her body felt frozen; she couldn't speak.

"May I kiss you?"

Horrified, she tried to shrink away from him, but the wall was unforgiving brick. She pressed her lips together and shook her head frantically, wanting to die.

He raised his eyebrows, absorbing her reaction with total calm. After appearing to think about it for a moment, he slowly backed his face away. He broke the eye contact they had sustained for several minutes.

Janey's relief was so overpowering that she gasped loudly. He watched with fascination as a shudder ran through her whole body, and she finally started to cry.

"Perhaps it will be a comfort to know that your father is looking for you."

_My father?_ Janey had never met her father.

But that's right, she was supposed to be Maureen. Maureen's father was a policeman. This guy…Mr. Stabler must have done something to him, arrested him maybe. Was this about revenge?

Janey wasn't stupid. Even in her frazzled mental state, she realized immediately she would have to play along. This man was out of his mind; if he knew he had the wrong girl she'd be shot dead as quickly as the real Maureen.

"My name is Lionel," he said, rising from his crouching position. From Jamey's perspective, sitting on the floor, he seemed to be unbelievably tall. "I am a friend of your father's."

Again she noticed the weird precision of his speech. It wasn't just the words; his pronunciation was careful, stilted. Like he was acting.

He smiled down at her, taking her in. "You look like him, but you do not have his eyes." Gently, he touched her cheek and wiped away some of her tears. The teardrops on his fingers temporarily mesmerized him. He moved his hand around in the dim light, examining the wet sheen. Then he brought up his fingers and touched his own eyes with her tears.

Just like that morning, when he had pressed her fiercely into the ground, he seemed to remember himself with a jolt. His head snapped around suddenly, like he was surprised to find someone watching him. The smile dropped from his lips.

"You are so lovely, Maureen, that I must take your picture."

When he turned his back, Janey found she could breathe more normally. She tried desperately to think. So far she hadn't said a word, and he hadn't really hurt her. Maybe he was just crazy, not really dangerous. Maybe she could convince him to let her go.

Lionel – that was what he said his name was, right? – was turned slightly away from her, fiddling with a digital camera. The muscles in his back rippled as he moved. His profile stood out sharply against the dark wall.

No longer faced with his hypnotic eyes, Janey was surprised to realize he was handsome. And to her astonishment he brushed his fingers through his hair twice before turning around.

He was vain. Maybe he would respond to compliments.

"You do not have to smile," he said as he raised the camera.

"Your grammar is excellent," she choked out.

He paused. She had surprised him.

"I just…I noticed you don't use contractions and you always speak in complete sentences."

He blinked, apparently nonplussed by the odd comment. A small, genuine smile appeared. "I thank you for noticing."

The camera flashed.

"Look," stammered Janey, "Please, I don't know what you want, but you don't seem like an evil person. And…my dad will do whatever you want. He'll pay, if you want money. If you could let me talk to him, please, I'll tell him you…were nice to me, and he'll do what you want. Just don't hurt me, okay?"

Lionel looked at the ground. He seemed pained. When he walked away and put the camera down on a shelf, she thought she might have succeeded. But then he turned around again and her chest constricted. He was carrying the gun.

"I can not let you talk to your father, my dear." He squatted in front of her. "Unfortunately, before you noticed my excellent grammar, I noticed something about you: You do not want to kiss me. You do not like me. You hurt my feelings."

"I'm sorry," she whispered miserably.

"You are not as sorry as I am. You are so beautiful, Maureen," he touched her hair lightly with his free hand, "that I can not bear the thought of you hating me."

His green eyes shone cruelly. "I hope I can teach you to like me."

He pointed the gun at her face, her teeth, then slowly downwards. The barrel sank into her belly. Janey couldn't hold back tears of panic.

"I already have your tears, darling," he said. "I need something else."

So quickly she didn't even have time to turn her head, he pulled the gun out of her stomach, flipped it around, and slammed the grip across her face. Her nose shattered; her front teeth loosened; blood spilled onto her shirt.

As she sank screaming to the floor, arms still suspended above her head, Lionel left her.

In a few seconds his camera started flashing again.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I'll be away from my computer for the next three days, but don't worry, I'll be back writing on Monday.

* * *

I own nothing.

* * *

Janey's mother arrived late on the second day of the investigation. Elliot picked her up at the Newark airport.

He had expected someone hysterical, furious, asking questions, laying blame. He was prepared to explain the situation coolly and professionally, to apologize when she began accusing him of endangering her baby, and to handle a sobbing breakdown. But the woman greeted him with a careless wave and a hug. She didn't ask about Janey. The first words out of her mouth after he introduced himself were, "I should be grateful for the trouble my daughter gets into, if it means I get to meet such handsome police officers."

Elliot immediately disliked her. "White trash" was the term that sprang to his mind, but he treated her with the respect she was due, as the parent of a victim.

She wasn't dressed for spring in New York; she wore a tight spaghetti-strap top, white jeans, and too much jewelry. Her nails were long and fake, her hair a crinkled bleach-blonde. After picking up her luggage, she insisted on taking ten minutes in the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. And on the way to the car she gripped Elliot's arm with both hands, smiling up at him and asking how he liked living in New York.

As soon as they were in the car he sharply stopped her chatter with, "Ms. Christopher, I'm not sure you've been told exactly how serious your daughter's situation is."

"It's Brandy, hon. And kids get into trouble, you know how they are. I'm sure she'll turn up."

"You…haven't been told that we know who has her?" Could Fin have left that much out?

"I _heard_, Mister Detective, that my brilliant college student daughter let a strange man into her room and was surprised when it didn't go well. I'm thinkin' Columbia maybe needs to raise their admission standards. Hey, you got a place for me to stay, right? Paid for?"

"Did you hear that the man is a serial rapist and murderer? That he tortures his victims to death?" He was angry now, lashing out for a reaction. He thought of those first terrible moments after he heard about the attack, how he had sped blindly through traffic toward the hospital. All the moments he and Maureen had ever shared had flashed before him, choking him with fear that this could be the moment it all ended. And for the past two days he had felt the same sick fear for Janey Christopher.

And this woman, her _mother_, for God's sake, was more interested in seeing Bloomingdale's than the horrific danger her daughter was in.

"Hey!" Brandy bit back, having caught the accusation in his voice. "I'm here, aren't I? Come across the freakin' country. I care. I'm concerned. And I don't need you judging me." She stuck a long cigarette in her mouth and fumbled for a lighter. He told her not to smoke in his car.

* * *

When they arrived at the station Elliot immediately knew there had been a development. Olivia, Munch, and Fin were gathered around his desk, talking in low voices. 

The three rose simultaneously with nervous looks when they saw Ms. Christopher. Olivia casually intercepted her and drew her away by the arm with, "Ma'am, I'm Detective Benson, Detective Stabler's partner. Why don't you come with me, and I'll answer any questions you have about your daughter's case." She was all gentle concern. Elliot hated knowing it was wasted on the indifferent Brandy, who gave the three men a little long-fingernailed wave before allowing herself to be led out.

As the women walked away Olivia gave Elliot a significant look over her shoulder. He waited until they were out of the room before turning to Munch and Fin to see what they were hiding on his desk.

"News?"

"A homeless guy brought in an envelope for you this morning," said Fin. "Said a guy gave him twenty bucks to deliver it. Had these in it."

He handed Elliot two photographs. The first was of Janey Christopher, sitting on the ground with her arms chained to a brick wall. She looked frightened but fine.

Elliot's breath left him when he saw the second. "Christ." He threw the pictures onto his desk and sat down hard. He had to close his eyes and rub his forehead with both hands to keep from losing his temper and hitting something.

Munch told him coolly – he had been cool toward Elliot ever since Maureen was attacked – that the homeless man was in the interrogation room, waiting for him. He and Fin returned to their own duties, leaving Elliot to brood.

It was harder now, knowing that the SVU squad was all Janey had. Her mother was more bothered by the cost of the plane ticket than her daughter's endangered life, and there was no father listed on Janey's birth certificate, which made sense to Elliot after meeting Brandy. They knew of no other relatives. As for friends, she was only a freshman in college, and not very outgoing; Maureen and a few classmates were the only kids her age who really knew her well.

Elliot and Olivia, and possibly Maureen, were the only people in the world who couldn't sleep because this girl was in trouble. It didn't seem fair. All reports said she was a sweet, smart kid. Devoted to her religion and reading, paying her own way through a private university.

If they did manage to save her, he wasn't even sure she'd have a place to stay. Her mother didn't have a job; she was living with a boyfriend in a San Diego apartment. Even if the boyfriend would let Janey stay there it probably wouldn't be a healthy environment for a recovering torture victim.

Elliot felt irrationally guilty. If Janey's and Maureen's positions had been reversed, the whole city would have been searching. They probably would have found her by now.

Not that he wished Sachet had taken the right girl. God, what would he have done if it were his daughter in that picture, her nose and teeth covered in blood, screaming and crying…?

Brandy's smoker's voice entered his consciousness as Olivia led her back through the station, presumably to drive her to the hotel room NYPD was providing her with. The sight of that fake blonde hair made Elliot sick.

He would question the homeless man in a minute. Right after calling to check on his kids.

* * *

Janey couldn't stop shivering. 

She now wore only a towel. After her nose stopped bleeding – and it had been hours – Lionel had impassively noted that her clothes were ruined. He had produced a large pair of scissors and efficiently cut off her shirt and bra, then removed her pants and underwear by hand. She had screamed and thrashed when he first came at her; he had had to hold the scissors to her throat in silence until she stilled.

When her underwear came off she couldn't help crying out, but Lionel was detached for the moment, apparently uninterested in her body. He wiped her face and neck clean gently, like a nurse, and brought her a bucket to pee in.

She had nearly been overcome with shame while he watched her go. The strength of adrenaline was gone; she felt boneless and shaky. She could barely raise herself off the bucket so he could remove it.

Then he had tied a towel around her torso, secured it with a safety pin, and left. To develop his pictures, Janey guessed.

Her face still burned with pain; she imagined she could feel a star pattern of fracture lines leading out from her nose. And she was swelling up, all the way to her eyes.

In her eighteen years of living with irresponsible parents – her free-spirit mother, two stepfathers, and a cadre of live-in boyfriends – no adult had ever, EVER hit her. She had never broken a bone. Though she had plenty of problems, extreme physical pain had simply not been a part of her reality. She didn't know how to deal with it now.

The worst part was that she now really understood what Lionel's strength meant: That if he wanted to, at any moment he could step on her leg and break it, crush her ribs with his fist, tear her arm off, snap her neck. She was absolutely in his power; if and when he decided to hurt her she wouldn't even have the strength to make him work for it.

Now she was nearly naked, freezing, curling up on herself to try to keep warm. She had to slacken her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering, because closing her mouth hurt her injured upper palette. Her body began to rock in rhythm with the throbbing pain in her face.

She was almost unconscious when the edge of a glass bumped her lower lip. A little water splashed on her mouth, and it hit her just how thirsty she was, how chapped her lips were. She opened her bruised eyes slowly to see Lionel's face inches from her own. He put one hand on the back of her neck, tilting her head backward to help her drink. She drank greedily and only dimly noticed the water's slight soapy bitterness. She even managed to whisper "thank you" after draining the glass; she wasn't so drained that she forgot the need to keep Lionel happy.

When Lionel released her she slumped back, exhausted. He smiled.

Right away she knew something was wrong. The water…she had been sleepy before, but now she felt really sick, like she might throw up.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked as her stomach gave a kick that made her head reel.

He didn't answer, but as the basement began to spin around Janey she would have swornLionel's huge eyes began to glow with malice. As if through a wobbling, greasy window, she saw him pick up the scissors he had used to cut off her shirt.

It was just as she had feared: she didn't even have the strength to cry as he began to cut her hair. Thankfully, it wasn't long before she slipped into unconsciousness.


	6. Chapter 6

Well, this was written on time, but goodness knows when it will show up. Anyone else having problems uploading new chapters in .docand .html?

* * *

I own nothing.

* * *

That night Janey dreamed about Mr. Stabler, the man Lionel thought was her father.

She didn't even know his first name; all she knew was that he worked for the police (Maureen hadn't been specific) and that he looked like Janey. Except the eyes. Probably he had Maureen's big blue eyes.

Growing up, she hadn't missed having a father. Real parenthood hadn't touched her; she had never received it nor needed it, and hadn't understood the other kids from broken homes who bemoaned the lack of role models and caregivers in their lives. Life was mostly common sense, she thought, and kids could figure it out as easily as most of the grownups Janey knew. But then, she had never been in any real trouble. She hadn't needed help like she surely needed it now.

Mr. Stabler comforted her in her dream. Janey pictured him as a big man, strong, with a set jaw and heavy hands. His hair was short, but the same dark reddish-brown as hers, and he was balding. He wore a suit because in her dream a blue police uniform seemed silly.

In the dream he really was her father. He removed the chains from her wrists and carried her away from the cold brick wall, sat with her on his lap and hugged her, told her he would take care of her, that she would be fine. She curled up like a little child while he rocked her and stroked her hair, and she was grateful that for once she didn't have to be the adult. He could be strong for her; she could cry and know he wasn't going to make her take care of herself the way her mother always had.

She looked up at his face, scrutinizing it, trying to find herself in his features. He did look like her in an older, masculine way. He had a big nose and a broad forehead with a widow's peak, kind of like hers, and his mouth was the same shape. But his eyes were so different…wide, intense, ice-blue.

"Dad…" she whispered, wishing, wishing with her whole soul that it was true.

As she stared at his face, his expression changed. His blue eyes glowed with cruelty and melted into Lionel's pale green.

She was awake.

A small circle of auburn hair on the floor around her reminded her of what had just happened. Lionel was staring at her intensely, and she could only imagine how she must look to him: shorn, shivering, broken.

There was a new energy about Lionel. He was breathing hard, and his crouching position was tense.

Janey wondered if she had said "Dad" out loud…what would he think?

"Your father is coming," he said, answering part of her question. "He has not forgotten you."

Janey realized he was holding eye contact just like the first morning they had arrived here. Crazily, she thought He's hypnotizing me. She wanted to look away, but was too afraid he would strike her again while she was unprepared. It seemed like as long as she kept eye contact there was an invisible barrier holding him back.

"I hope he will not arrive before you have learned to like me."

God, no, not this, she couldn't handle this.

He brought his hand up to her cheek and rubbed his thumb across her sore lower lip. It was chapped and bloody.

"Yesterday you were more beautiful than you are today," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I am good enough for you now. Perhaps you want to kiss me now."

No, no, no. "Please leave me alone. Please stop..." A bubble of leftover blood in her mouth popped on her lips as she begged.

He looked almost comically concerned. "I would not leave you alone while you are hurt." Slowly, so slowly it couldn't be real, he leaned towards her. They held eye contact until the last second, when his eyes flickered down to her lips.

Wild strength rose up in Janey. Control left her. She slammed her heel into Lionel's stomach as hard as she could; when he grunted in pain she kicked him in the face and kept on kicking, trying to hold him back like a child throwing a temper tantrum. He backed away, more startled than hurt.

He looked disappointed. Like she had tricked him. Tension cracked on the air between them, and he bared his teeth in frustration, distorting his handsome features.

Janey knew she couldn't hold him back for long if he really decided he wanted her…that way. And she thought that if he did – if he kissed her, or went further – she really would go insane.

The idea of sex was unsettling to her in the best of circumstances; having seen what promiscuity made of her mother, she had determined even before she became a Christian that she would wait, that no man would get more than a kiss out of her unless she was sure it was true love. At fourteen she had decided to wait until marriage; her mother had laughed when it came up in conversation.

She had said, "Hon, why do you want to be a prude? Let me tell you the dirty truth your Sunday School frosties may have failed to mention: This is the twenty-first century, doll, and ain't no man alive going to marry a girl who won't give him a sample. My advice: shop around. Enjoy yourself, baby; no harm in it."

Janey had never talked with her mother about sex again.

Now Lionel's eyes were shining with violence, and Janey wondered what her mother would do in her situation. Just give up, probably. Close her eyes, shut her mouth, and maybe when he'd gotten what he wanted he would let her go. She'd smoke a pack of cigarettes afterwards to ease the indignity, the way she did after every failed relationship.

And Maureen, what if it were Maureen here? Would she be ashamed to give in, even when there wasn't really a choice? They'd never exactly agreed on the abstinence issue…Janey wondered if Mr. Stabler knew that about his daughter. But she thought Maureen would fight.

Janey needed to decide right now, before this escalated as it was undoubtedly about to: If Lionel put a knife to her throat and told her to hold still for him, would she? If he beat her, pointed that gun at her, was she going to close her eyes and try to survive, or fight, knowing she would lose, knowing that his anger could end up killing her?

Lionel was panting; the calm detachment he had sustained so long drained out of his face while Janey watched. She could actually see his sanity leaving his body. When his muscles clenched and she knew he was going to fly at her, for a moment the cold, pain, and bone-melting fear of her reality were gone; absent from herself, with time almost frozen, she sent up a prayer for strength. A warm, strong hand seemed to grip her shoulder; she imagined it was Maureen's dad, who she wanted more than anything to be her own dad, giving her what strength he could…telling her that he cared, that this moment mattered because there was someone who loved her.

The moment passed when Lionel's restraining decorum vanished, and he kissed her violently, slamming her back into the wall. The stinging of her broken nose rocked Janey's brain; she thought it would kill her.

But it didn't.

And with the memory of her dream about Mr. Stabler, the father she never had, infusing strength into her weakened frame, she bit down on Lionel's tongue until she drew blood.

* * *

Finally, finally, there was a break in the Janey Christopher case.

The homeless man who had brought in Lionel Sachet's envelope of pictures had seen him get into a dirty black or possibly dark brown SUV, a Cherokee or Trooper, and had actually been able to read half its license plate before it sped out of sight. Though a hopeless alcoholic, the homeless man's brain still worked to some extent in the mornings, and realizing helping the cops could lead to a reward for him, he had worked to observe and remember all he could about the encounter. Elliot didn't disappoint him; after two hours of intense interrogation, he had given the man the best lunch the precinct could buy and forty dollars in cash. Elliot didn't care if he spent it on alcohol; for a car description and half a license plate he'd have bought the man a keg of straight vodka himself.

Computer checks were running now, though not knowing the SUV's make would significantly lengthen the following investigation; unless a black or brown SUV with the exact license plate 3-point match had been stolen recently, they would probably end up with ten to twenty potentials to check. But it was something. Even if they ended up with a list a hundred long they would at least have a place to begin.

While waiting for the precinct techies to print up their search list, Elliot held the framed picture of Janey Olivia had taken from the dorm room. There was something about her face, her expression, that captivated him.

She wasn't beautiful the way Maureen was beautiful; her nose was on the large side and her cheeks were full, some would say chubby. But in the picture she looked so happy, carefree…she glowed. Just like Siabhon Monohan, he thought grimly, remembering how he found Lionel's last victim.

She, too, had been a bright, pretty honors student; her picture had hung smilingly on the bulletin board in the squad room for three weeks, speaking of hope, happiness, potential.

Finding her had been a terrible moment for him. The instant he saw her face he knew she would never recover; the girl Lionel Sachet had kidnapped had been dead for weeks. In her place was an insensible body with lifeless eyes. She was beyond both pain and relief. Even when Elliot was on top of Sachet, beating and cuffing him, she had watched unfeelingly. He was too late. She was utterly broken.

Elliot prayed to God that when they found Janey, the spark he could see in her picture would still be visible. That she wouldn't have lost the ability to smile, to feel, to enjoy being a college student.

He hoped she was a fighter. For both their sakes, he needed her to stay whole until he and Olivia could save her; and for Maureen and all the other girls Sachet had hurt, he needed her to be strong enough to live on afterwards, the way Siobhan hadn't been able to.

In the quiet moment, his exhaustion pulled him out of himself; he thought the smiling picture transformed into a tearstained, battered face staring up at him, pleading; he reached out to grip the poor kid's shoulder for support, but his hand hit nothing and he awoke with a jerk.

Olivia was touching the top of his head to wake him. The list of SUVs was ready; he and she immediately got to work on narrowing down the potentials.


	7. Chapter 7

I own nothing.

* * *

For the first time since starting this case, Elliot lost his temper. 

He had done well so far, considering the stress, and had been all calm business while he and Olivia narrowed down the vehicle search to their three most likely choices and prepared to visit the first. But they hadn't yet made it out of the station; Munch had entered the squad room with his normal composure missing, held up bloody hands, and announced that a clue in the Janey Christopher case was lying dead on the precinct steps.

"First I thought I'd call 911," he said, heading for the sink, "But then I said to myself, personal visits are so much more polite, right?"

It was the homeless man who had given them their break. Shot three times in the chest, but posed to look asleep, it had been hours before anyone took offense at his loitering and tried to move him. Munch had just arrived back from a witness interview when the discovery was made, and had made an effort to save the man before figuring out he was far too late.

The real blow for Elliot was what Munch found in the homeless man's pockets: One was filled with a patch of bloody hair; the other, with bloody scissors. Huang had been right; Lionel Sachet was moving fast.

Elliot, cursing loudly, punched over two filing stands before Olivia and Fin grabbed him long enough for him to calm down. Munch looked over but didn't stop washing his hands; apparently his disturbance over finding a body two minutes ago hadn't disrupted his unwillingness to sympathize with Elliot over this case.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" Elliot snapped after a second.

They released him; he roughly shrugged their hands off his arms and paced furiously across the room. "God DAMN it!"

"What the hell is going on out here?" Cragen asked, emerging from his office at the noise. The squad room floor was covered in scattered papers, and Elliot was in his shirtsleeves, disheveled and breathing hard. Olivia, Fin, and Munch said nothing, but Cragen wasn't a fool. He pursed his lips harshly.

"Elliot. In here. Now."

It looked like Elliot might challenge him; he gritted his teeth and his lips twitched as if a snarled rejoinder was itching to voice itself. But he collected himself and walked into Cragen's office, his tense posture communicating the barely restrained fury pumping through his limbs.

Cragen calmly shut the door. The instant the latched clicked, Elliot began, "Captain, I understand why you called me in here, but we've got a crisis-"

"Be quiet, Elliot," said Cragen. He indicated the chair across from his desk. "Sit down, we need to talk."

"Captain, we're on the clock here, in another day this girl will be dead-"

"I considered not letting you take this case," Cragen interrupted firmly. Elliot shut his mouth and straightened his spine. "You're under a lot of stress with the divorce, and the connection to Maureen-"

"I'm not investigating Maureen's shooting, I'm investigating the kidnapping of her roommate. Janey Christopher isn't related to me. You know there's no legal basis for pulling conflict of interest."

"Janey Christopher was kidnapped by a man trying to hurt you."

"Liv worked the entire Plummer case when he was out for her."

"Olivia doesn't have your anger management problems."

Elliot's nostrils flared, and his pupils shrank, making his eyes look almost entirely ice-blue. Cragen didn't back off. His face was kind and fatherly as always, but he was unintimidated, and would do what he had to as captain.

There was a long silence; they were two good men who understood each other, yet neither was willing to compromise.

Finally Elliot said, "You know me. You know I'm not going to do anything to hurt this investigation, Captain."

"Destroying our squad room could hurt other investigations."

"I'm sorry about that, it won't happen again. But we've got a lead, and we're running out of time. _Let me do my job_."

Cragen looked pained, like what he had to say next was difficult to get out. "You should know, Elliot, that at any time your fellow detectives are ready to step in for you…And we hope you'll let us know if your need to solve this case may be clouding your judgment."

_Your fellow detectives._ "Munch. Munch has been talking to you about me."

"John has expressed concern-"

"He should be _expressing concern_ about the victim, by not getting in my way!"

"Just tell me…if you catch Sachet, what are you going to do with him?"

Elliot went white at the implication, though his expression didn't change. "What do you mean?" He knew exactly what Cragen meant.

"I mean are you going to read him his rights and arrest him, or are you going to beat him to death like you tried to eight years ago?"

"I'll do my job. I want him to die in jail."

"See that he makes it to jail, El. I mean it."

"I understand."

"One more incident and I'll pull you."

"…I understand."

"Okay. Get to work."

Elliot was careful not to slam the door on his way out of the office. Olivia was waiting for him, looking worried. He shook his head casually, like it had been a slap on the wrist. But as they walked out to investigate the precinct steps where the homeless man's body had lain, Elliot shot a look at Munch which he hoped communicated his disgust.

Munch, though by far the smaller, weaker and less passionate man, returned the glance without any sign of fear or repentance.

* * *

Lionel did not rape Janey. He tore the towel off her body while she screamed and kicked like an animal; he kissed her and ran his hands down her flanks, her thighs, and took most of her resistance without seeming to feel it. But she managed to rake her teeth across his cheek, slicing the skin, and when she did, he yelped and jumped as if burned, clapping his hand to his face. 

Looking shocked, he scuttled back almost comically. Janey remembered his vanity; though she hadn't really planned it, she felt proud for hurting her attacker in possibly the only way that could really affect him.

But he had his revenge.

He was cool about it; having his face cut, oddly, restored his calm. Before saying anything he left the room for a few minutes and returned with a small bandage over the cut on his cheek.

"Why do you want me to be ugly like you, Maureen?" he asked.

"When my dad finds you, he's going to tear your whole face off," she hissed viciously, the temporary victory having filled her with an insane adrenaline-fuelled bravado.

Lionel broke her wrists.

Just grabbed her hands and pulled them towards him, straining her thin bones against the sharp edges of the handcuffs. Blood flowed sluggishly over the metal, down her naked sides, making two small pools beside her. In less than a minute, each wrist gave with a sickening pop. Then Lionel gathered up the bloodsoaked hair he had cut earlier and left.

Thankfully, the ordeal wasn't as painful as it could have been. Janey's arms had been suspended above her head for…days? How long had she been down here? However long it was, they had mostly gone numb. The actual breaking of the bones hadn't hurt as much as having her head slammed against the brick wall had.

Of course, in a few minutes the swelling started. Her handcuffs were already cruelly tight; as her wrists quickly puffed up to twice their normal size, a brutal throbbing worked its way from her arms down to her head and whole body. The pain made her ill, till she was retching uncontrollably. The sliced skin on her wrists was now embedded in the cuffs; it wouldn't heal until her arms were free, and she thought with terror of the danger of infection.

Lionel had said Mr. Stabler was looking for her. God, where was he? What was taking so long?

She believed – because in her desperation she needed to believe – that as soon as he found her she would be saved. The Mr. Stabler she dreamed of was stronger than Lionel. And he would know how to free her arms, to clean her wounds, to save her body before pain and exposure destroyed it.

Lionel had called her ugly; she wondered how she would look when Mr. Stabler found her. Her nose smashed, face puffed and bruised beyond recognition, hair cut to only about an inch long. Naked, shivering. Blood running down her now swollen arms.

She was still alive, though. She had gone into a terrible battle with every disadvantage, and fought to a draw.

Maybe there was a reason it was her instead of Maureen chained to this wall. She remembered her pastor once saying that God knows everyone's limits, and never sends a cross too heavy for its bearer. Maybe she was here because, unlike Maureen, she was strong enough to survive.

Or maybe Mr. Stabler couldn't bear the cross of having his daughter taken by Lionel, and so Janey was chosen instead.

She found she didn't mind the idea. It actually gave her a little more strength, will to stay awake, to resist succumbing to her pain and exhaustion. If she was here for a reason, she wanted to be worthy of the charge. She wanted to deal through faith and courage, because that meant someone else wouldn't have to.

Through her shivers and retches she prayed for the ability to hang on until Mr. Stabler could save her. She didn't need to pray that he _would_ save her; in her soul she had no doubt about that.


	8. Chapter 8

I own nothing.

* * *

Lionel was gone for hours, and by the time he returned Janey's lips were dry and cracked; her throat ached with thirst, aggravated by the dehydration her broken bones caused as they swelled up with blood. The last thing she had had to drink was the bitter, soapy water from yesterday which made her sick. She hadn't eaten since Lionel kidnapped her. 

Should she ask him for food and water? Every other time she had spoken to him, she had quickly regretted it.

How long could a person live without water? Two days? Three?

She knew Lionel was back by the odd sounds she could hear upstairs – heavy pounding and scraping, like he was moving furniture. It went on for quite a while before he finally appeared. His hair was disheveled. As he met Janey's gaze, he ran his fingers through it self-consciously.

"He is very close," Lionel said, eyes blazing. "It is entirely possible he will find us."

"My father?" Janey tried to ask, but the words came out as a dry croak.

It worried her that Lionel didn't seem upset that Mr. Stabler was tracking him down. What she at first thought was agitation now looked like…excitement. A little grin was actually playing at the sides of his mouth. And he wasn't interested in Janey; he walked right past her to a dark corner of the basement, where he fiddled with something metallic – probably the gun.

Though she had planned to hold out longer, the knowledge that relief was potentially not far away weakened Janey's resolve. Licking her lips carefully, she whispered, "Can I please have something to drink?"

Lionel dropped whatever he was playing with; it clattered to the ground, making Janey flinch. A bullet bounced loudlyon the floor by his feet; he picked it up carefully, but did not turn around.

"You know this scratch you gave me," he said slowly, rubbing the side of his face, "could easily become infected. The human mouth teems with dangerous bacteria."

Her heart sank. The man was going to let her die. He was merciless – insane.

"Please, just a little water."

"NO!" he snapped. Then he inhaled sharply.

Both immediately realized he had lost a point in the dignity game; he had never let out a one-word exclamation in all their time together. For the first time, he had failed to form a complete sentence.

To Janey this was only interesting. But Lionel's reaction was extreme. His hands shook. A keening began in his throat; it grew louder and louder until it tore out as a bellow, and he grabbed his head with both hands as if trying to contain the sound.

He stumbled towards Janey, veering sharply to the left and running into the wall beside her. Without thinking, she tried to pull away from him, and her wrists sent lances of electric pain down her arms. She shrieked in agony.

Lionel collapsed beside her on the wall…crying? Like a sick child, he curled up around his dry sobs.

After the pain dissipated Janey could only watch in disbelief. How crazy was this man? Would she ever push a button that _didn't_ send him into some kind of mad fit?

"It's okay…" she said uncertainly. "It's okay, it doesn't matter, you're smart, you're allowed to mess up. Did you know I'm an English major? So I know your speech is perfect, I can tell. I can hear it." On the last sentence her voice crackled, and she coughed harshly.

Lionel's head snapped up. "You said you wanted something to drink." His voice was cold, hateful. "I will give you a drink."

Janey's heart began thundering in dread. Lionel ran out of sight and came back with a nearly full bottle of Windex. It glowed improbably blue in the light of the single bulb of the basement as he unscrewed the cap and brought the bottle to her face. She immediately recognized its smell as being the same as the tainted water he had given her earlier.

Except now it wasn't diluted.

"You wanted a drink. Drink this," Lionel said. Teeth bared in rage, he looked like an animal. He shoved the lip of the bottle against her lips; some of the blue liquid splashed out onto her chapped sores, where it burned wickedly. Janey shut her mouth and eyes tight, and turned her face as far into the wall as she could.

"DRINK IT!"

"NO!"

Janey didn't know if Windex would kill her, but she knew her body couldn't handle even a mild poison right now. God, she wanted water; as Lionel shoved the bottle opening against her closed lips she had to fight her body's desperate instinct to drink.

He grabbed her jaw in one large hand and forced her to face him; he squeezed both sides of her face, forcing her teeth apart. The Windex splashed into her mouth; some went down her throat, tasting of fire, and she choked, wondering if this was how she was going to die.

Above them there was a crash. Lionel spun away, staring up at the ceiling in astonishment. Behind him Janey vomited blue. In the silences between her gasps they could hear heavy footsteps above their heads, and muted voices.

Lionel's green eyes brightened with delight. "He is here, Maureen. He is here for you and for me."

Writhing on the floor, Janey tried to scream, but again her voice failed her at the critical moment. Her "help" came out as a pathetically shrill whisper; it also brought up more of the Windex, burning her eyes and nasal passages. Lionel didn't even try to restrain her; there was no way the police upstairs – if it was the police – could possibly hear her.

"Will he find us?" Lionel asked. "Will he save you, Maureen?" An almost innocent smile broke across his face; he looked like a little kid waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. "Oh, let him come."

He ran his fingers through his hair automatically and quietly moved up the stairs until he was out of sight. Janey waited, listening to pacing footsteps above her for what seemed like a long time.

She continued to try to scream, but her voice was gone. And she dimly realized that she was now really, really sick. In trouble sick. Chills shook her; her stomach felt full of nails; her head was reeling and her eyes couldn't focus. She realized that between her wounds, dehydration, and the poisoning, she would die if she didn't get water soon.

Then, to her horror, the footsteps stopped. A door closed.

They were gone. They hadn't found her.

As Lionel stepped back into the light Janey started to cry. She couldn't help it; the disappointment, the pain, the thirst, it was too much.

She didn't want to die.

Lionel watched her curiously as she sobbed hopelessly, miserably. Still he showed no signs of wanting to ease her suffering.

Instead, he said, with sinister simplicity, "I thought you were a Psychology major."

Janey prayed for unconsciousness that wouldn't come.

* * *

"There's nothing here, Elliot," Olivia said firmly. They were in the last house on their search list. It had all their criteria – it was owned by a single older woman (nowhere to be found) who also owned a black SUV; it was in the suburbs and looked strikingly similar to Lionel Sachet's old residence. The only problem was it didn't have a basement. Elliot had knocked over a lamp while trying to move a couch which he thought might be hiding a basement entrance, but there simply wasn't one to be found. 

"I'm not sure there's nothing. Where's the owner, Liv?"

"Out of town? I hoped this was it as much as you, but there's no sign Sachet has ever been here. We need to move on."

"Just give me a few more minutes." Olivia was wrong; she hadn't hoped as much as Elliot that they would find Sachet here. He badly wanted, _needed_ this to be the right house; if it wasn't, they were back to nothing. Back to waiting to receive another piece of Janey Christopher's broken body in the mail.

And they were out of time.

Elliot's nerves were straining; in the back of his head, he thought he could hear a cracked, desperate voice whispering "help, help, help," but when he asked Olivia if she could hear anything she gave him a doubtful look. He didn't push it; he didn't need to get thrown off the case for mental instability. And he hadn't been able to find a source direction for the voice; it really was in his head.

Still he didn't want to leave. This was the place. It was _right_, he could feel it.

"El, it's getting dark. Let's get back to the precinct. You need to sleep before we go any further on this."

_Help, help, help_. Frantic brown eyes flashed before him.

"Yeah," he conceded finally. He wouldn't sleep, of course. But he needed to get out of this unnerving house before he went crazy. He almost punched the wall before they left, and settled for grinding his teeth viciously instead.

They were out of leads. Janey Christopher was going to die. And when they found her body he was going to have to tell Maureen.

He sat in the driver's seat of the squad car regretfully, not turning it on. He stared at the little suburban home – white with blue trim, one tree in the yard, round window near the roof. It was perfect. Exactly what they had been looking for. Why couldn't it have been the right place?

"This isn't your fault, Elliot," said Olivia. When he didn't react she reached over and turned the keys in the ignition for him. Before taking the wheel he gave her a glance so full of pain that it nearly stopped her heart.

He pulled onto the road with his teeth clenched.

"Remember the Plummer case?" he asked suddenly about an hour into their drive.

Olivia went stone-faced. "Of course I do."

An innocent man she helped put in jail had, when released, started killing rape victims she had saved. They caught him eventually, and Olivia was forced to shoot him. It was an awful experience, and the guilt of it all haunted her still.

"Then you know what this case means to me."

"I don't blame myself for what Eric Plummer-"

"Don't lie to me, Olivia. I know you do."

"It doesn't matter. We just have to do our best, Elliot, like always. You killing yourself is not going to save Janey Christopher."

Elliot grunted, knowing she was right but unable to acknowledge it.

"I need coffee," he said.

He pulled into the next convenience store and Olivia followed him in, with a somewhat resentful silence. He knew he wasn't being fair to her by resisting her good advice and logic; she was an excellent detective and a good friend. She was also right. He would apologize when this case was all over.

They both got large cappuccinos and Elliot reached for his wallet, meaning to pay for both of them. Olivia stared as a strange expression crossed his face, and he began patting himself down.

"My wallet's gone."

"How? We haven't bought anything all day." They hadn't even been around people all day, or had to flash their badges; it was house-hopping from that morning on. "Did you have it when you left?"

"Yeah, I haven't changed coats since yesterday." Frustration was written on his forehead, and in the lines around his mouth. This was not what he needed right now.

"I'll pay," Olivia said quickly.

"I could have sworn I had it, it's always in this pocket…" Elliot dug deeply one last time into his pocket, and froze.

Slowly he drew out his hand; Olivia's jaw dropped. Between his fingers was a small grey bullet.

She met his eyes with horror. All she could get out was "Elliot…"

They both understood, and sprinted out to the car, leaving the coffees on the store counter.

"We had the right house," Elliot said as he pulled out recklessly. "I knew. I knew it, I could feel it. I shouldn't have left."

Olivia called the precinct for backup while he cursed himself. They had been right there. Sachet had been close enough to steal his wallet, to replace it with a cruel message, he had even heard Janey's voice, and like fools they had driven off. God, they'd lost two hours. Sachet could be raping or killing her right now.

His foot was a rock on the accelerator; he drove maniacally, swerving around the other cars without regard for anything but speed.

"Elliot, slow down, you're going to kill us!" cried Olivia.

"Liv," he answered through clenched teeth. "I've got family photos in my wallet. Maureen's picture."

After inhaling sharply, she answered, "God," and he knew she understood.

Janey's life was over the instant Sachet learned she wasn't Elliot's daughter. And he would learn that as soon as he opened Elliot's wallet.

They sped to the suburbs, racing a deadline they both believed had already passed.

* * *

A/N: For more information on the Plummer case, watch Episode 45: Wrath (Season 3). 


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: So I had to replace the last chapter after I found a typo. Usually I'll let one or two typos slide, but this one was just too Freudian: Elliot, looking for his keys, begins "patting myself down." LOL. I've got to stop publishing at midnight…and stop obsessing over Detective Stabler.

* * *

I own nothing.

* * *

Lionel was waiting. He paced nervously back and forth, multiplying himself in Janey's wavering vision, making her feel seasick. Her body was shutting down; she barely had the strength to lift her head when, once, he got too close. 

He had something in his hands which he occasionally played with – threw and caught, or rubbed thoughtfully. A wallet? Janey couldn't be sure. The basement had taken on a dream-like quality in her fading lucidity. Lionel now seemed unnaturally, unreasonably tall. From her low position on the floor and the warping of her perspective, he was a giant. At any second he would notice her and crush her with one foot like a bug.

"Do not be afraid, Maureen," he said. "Your story is not over. There is still time…for all of us."

All of who? God, her throat and wrists hurt so badly, why couldn't she pass out? Survival mechanism, probably: Stay awake when you're dying of thirst, because you don't have any time to waste on rest. Suffer so you'll be motivated to find water.

A mirage tortured her; the blue glow of the Windex she had thrown up wobbled playfully, like it was the top of a river. Janey was possessed by a mad desire to stretch her neck down and lap it up. It looked cool, fresh. She actually moved to drink it, but her wrists, no longer mercifully numb, jolted her entire body with pain when she tried to bend over. Crushed, she slumped back into the wall.

Then, still staring at the puddle, she saw something else. The blue shifted and swirled; suddenly it looked like a pair of bright pale eyes staring straight into hers. Their gaze was intense, strong. She recognized them from her dream.

Mr. Stabler's eyes.

He wasn't gone, he hadn't given up. He was coming for her.

"He is coming!" Lionel barked loudly. Had he heard Janey's thoughts? What was going on?

"He found my gift just this minute. I know he did. He is turning around. Soon he will be back for us."

It struck Janey that she might not be going crazy. If Lionel had seen Mr. Stabler too, was it possible they had both developed the same connection to him? Could wanting to see the same person badly enough actually have given them a mental bond?

More likely, Lionel's insanity was contagious.

His pacing doubled in speed. "Do you know, Maureen, your father came for me once when I had another beautiful girl as my guest? She did not care for me at first either. She, too, had to learn to like me. The day she learned to like me was the day your father met us."

Flashing, snapping images, as if on an old film reel, flashed before Janey; her dimming mind conjured up a play of what must have happened, long ago.

Another girl, dark-haired and beautiful, chained to a wall. Broken. Bleeding. Lionel on top of her. Mr. Stabler, strong and righteous, yanking Lionel away, slamming him down onto the floor. She saw Lionel's nose crumple like paper under Mr. Stabler's fist; knowing Lionel's inability to deal with shame, she saw him curl up screaming on the floor, trying to hide his nakedness and his broken face. Business shoes continued to ram into his broad back. Large hands yanked him to his feet, bare knuckles slammed into stomach, face, genitals. The beating was crazy. Ruthless.

There was no reason for her to believe what she saw, but unresisting, she took it as fact. The strong saving angel of her dream morphed into an avenging angel. It made her sad – she didn't like to think of Mr. Stabler as a cruel man; no matter what he had done to her the sight of Lionel's face being crushed brought her no satisfaction.

All she wanted was relief.

Leather met sensitive flesh with a jolt; Lionel had thrown the wallet at her head to wake her up. It slapped loudly into the puddle of Windex and blood. "Do you recognize that?"

No, but her brain hadn't shut off so completely that she forgot her role. "Dad's wallet," she whispered.

"He is so close, Maureen. I left the door open for him."

Why? Why did he want Mr. Stabler to find him?

The sound of yelling above their heads. Pounding footsteps. A man's voice, which Janey knew to be Mr. Stabler's:

"Sachet! We know you're in here! Let her go, we won't have to hurt you! Sachet!"

Lionel smiled. He pulled the gun out of his back pocket and laid it carefully on the ground, like he was displaying a piece of art. He turned it a few times before, apparently satisfied, he approached Janey.

From another pocket of his jeans he pulled out a small key. It flashed cleanly in the single light bulb's glare, and he waved it before her eyes as if it was a treat. When her eyes managed to focus and track it he brought it up to the cuff at her left wrist. Slowly, gently her arm was released from the wall; then the other. When her arms dropped below her heart for the first time in days, the return of circulation was like fire; Janey moaned in agony and slumped over in fetal position, wounded wrists pressed to her chest.

Strong arms wrapped around her. Janey felt tiny, brittle, as Lionel raised her to his broad chest. She was carried to the open center of the basement, and laid onto the cool stone floor next to the gun in the middle of the light bulb's glow.

Lionel knelt beside her, helping her to sit up; he stroked what was left of her hair and rocked her gently. The frantic pounding continued upstairs.A low woman's voice was raised along with Mr. Stabler's.

"It is perfect," Lionel whispered in Janey's ear. "It is so much the same, for them, for us. The time is right." His lips touched the shell of her ear, drifting down her chin, her neck. "Now you have learned to like me, and we can finish this."

The movement from the wall had roused Janey somewhat; as Lionel's hands ran down her sides and bare chest, and his lips met hers, she understood what was happening. He was recreating the moment when Mr. Stabler had caught him years ago. Finishing what he started. The other girl was gone, probably dead; and she, as Mr. Stabler's daughter, was the logical replacement.

Lionel was trying to make this moment end differently. Correctly. To erase his shame.

Damned if she was going to let him.

Two days ago she had made up her mind to fight, even if it meant her death, and she was not going to let this go on any longer while she had the power to stop it. She only hoped Mr. Stabler would forgive her for not surviving long enough to be rescued; but it was for his sake as well as her own. If Lionel raped her now she knew she would break, and better for Mr. Stabler to find her dead than broken.

Her body was unresponsive; she couldn't move to resist as Lionel propped her against him and removed his shirt. She had to wait until he laid her back and pressed her into the ground, kissed her stomach, discarded his pants and underwear, raised her back up, and held her face to his; only then was his ear close enough to her mouth that she could whisper and be sure he could hear her failing gasp of a voice.

"I'm not her. I'm not Maureen Stabler."

She thought the two of them must make a picturesque tableau as Lionel froze. His eyes snapped open, looking wider, greener, and more wild than Janey had ever seen them.

"It was Maureen you shot in our doom room. My name is Janey." She coughed harshly, splitting her chapped lips. "You murdered her, and you're never going to finish this because you can't get her back. Do what you want to me, but you won't win. And when you've lost, Mr. Stabler's going to kill you, you son of a bitch."

For a full thirty seconds Lionel didn't move. Other than his eyes, his face was immobile. It was like she had slapped him.

Then he lost it.

In pain and terror Janey found a reserve of strength which spent itself in a body-ripping scream.

* * *

Gun drawn, Elliot was in the living room of the little house when he heard the scream. It came from a broom closet with its door slightly ajar. He threw the door open so hard it actually came off its hinges; in the closet, one of the wood panels on the wall was pulled back, revealing a dark hole – the basement entrance he had been so sure existed. 

Coming through the hole were the sounds of a vicious struggle – pounding, scratching, crying, yelling.

"OLIVIA!" Elliot yelled as he threw himself through the open slot. "HERE!"

He entered the basement at the top of a staircase; in the second before his eyes could adjust to the switch in lighting he felt a pull at his knee. The wooden panel behind him swung shut with a bang. Tripwire.

Behind him he could hear Olivia shouting, hitting the wall of the closet, but Elliot couldn't wait. She would find her way in.

And now he could see what was happening.

In the center of a circle of light on the basement floor, Sachet was on top of Janey. They were both naked, but he was not raping her. He was beating her to death.

As Elliot raced down the stairs Sachet, holding Janey by the shoulders, slammed her head into the ground again and again. Screaming inarticulate curses, he hit her face, drove his knees into her chest, crushing her.

"Get off her! Police! GET OFF HER!" Elliot swung around the landing and raced towards them. Blood rushed through him like flames; a wild strength took him over and he flew at Lionel, mad, ready to shoot, ready to tear the man apart.

He never saw the gun lying on the ground beside Lionel and Janey; didn't even register when Lionel grabbed it, threw up his arm, and fired, screaming like a creature damned.

The bullet couldn't stop his momentum. He knocked Lionel over as he fell, dropping his gun.

Lionel rose; Elliot didn't. Though he couldn't know it, his liver and spleen were in tatters. Thick dark blood oozed from the belly wound, soaking his shirt.

Janey's eyes, partially blocked by her blackened, swollen lids, met Elliot's as they lay prostrate beside each other: he on his stomach, she on her back. Her eyes were cloudy, sleepy; but he would have sworn he saw a spark there – of recognition, happiness. Then her gaze drifted down to the swiftly spreading blood puddle beneath him, and her lips parted. Her breath escaped in a quiet, despairing, "No…"

Lionel's laughter filled the basement. It was the laughter of a true madman, and to Elliot it sounded like sobbing.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I am evil. No, this is NOT how it ends. Hope the update was worth the wait. 


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